


Staring Down The Barrel

by RedLeaderfic



Category: National Wrestling Alliance, Professional Wrestling
Genre: Denial of Feelings, M/M, Protectiveness, Rival Relationship, Supernatural Elements, best enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-14 00:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLeaderfic/pseuds/RedLeaderfic
Summary: Jason wasn't jealous of all the success Chase had found in Japan, contrary to popular belief.Or at least not just.





	Staring Down The Barrel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beedekka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beedekka/gifts).



> Thank you for introducing me to Jason! Have the best reveals day.
> 
> Set in the break between Tag League and Wrestle Kingdom.

Jason had just about given up on his ancient car getting him out of town before the storm hit when he spotted someone standing outside the rec center in the driving snow like an idiot. Like most of the state everything had shut down with half an inch was on the road, let alone the amount they were promised to get, and Jason didn’t think he’d seen another soul in hours. Whoever it was, he was dressed like a Bullet Club billboard and peering into the dark windows; at first Jason took him for a lost fan before he drove up close enough to recognize the set of familiar shoulders and the brown ponytail just sticking out from a baseball cap. He let out an incredulous bark of laugher and stepped on the brake, only skidding a foot or so on the already slick roads. He put the car in park and levered himself out the window so he could see over the roof, banging on it to get Chase’s attention. “Chowens!” he said, grinning at how theatrically Chase rolled his eyes at the nickname. “The hell are you doing out here?”

Chase’s sneer of distaste at having to deal with him could be seen clear across town. “Why’s the building still closed? Did they cancel the show?”

“What show? You mean tomorrow’s show?”

“No, tonight’s show, the show’s on the twenty---” Chase seemed to catch himself then, rubbing one hand over his face. “I’m still on Japan time.”

“Less than two minutes and you’ve already name dropped Japan. That’s gotta be a record even for you.” Chase rolled his eyes again, rubbing his hands up over both arms. _Must still be on Japan weather, too_ , Jason thought; he was wearing a light jacket that wasn’t close to being up to this freak cold snap. “You better get back on the road while you can. Or don’t, not like I was fighting you tomorrow.”

Chase shook his head. “I got dropped off, I’ll call for another car.”

Jason was mildly impressed he’d managed to get even one car willing to drive him around in this weather. “Yeah, you try that. You been overseas so long you forget how things around here shut down when the roads get white?” Chase looked up into the slate gray sky, hunching his shoulders against the wind. Jason rolled his eyes and slid back into the driver’s seat. “Well, get in the car if you’re gonna,” Jason said, the words coming out before he’d realized that was even on his mind. Chase’s head snapped around in surprise and Jason couldn’t blame him, he was pretty surprised at himself too. “This bunch’ll never book me again if they find out I let you die of hypothermia,” he said in a cover up attempt that sounded feeble even to his ears. He watched Chase seem to consider his options, squeezing the steering wheel so hard his hands hurt. Maybe Chase would decide he had better options and let him off the hook. He was such a big shot now after all, surely he had other people he could call.

Another frigid blast whistled between the buildings and that seemed to make up Chase’s mind for him. Jason felt his stomach churn when Chase nodded at him, putting up one hand to tell Jason to give him a second; Jason was torn between savage glee that Chase was reduced to taking him up on the offer and despair that now he would have to put up with the idiot and only himself to blame for it. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel as Chase disappeared around the corner, then groaned when Chase reappeared dragging three enormous bags. “Why you gotta pack up your whole life whenever you go on tour?” he grumbled as Chase got to squeezing his luggage into the trunk and backseat.

“I came straight from the airport, I thought I was late,” Chase said, collapsing shivering into the passenger seat. “Didn’t know you were booked for this show too.”

“I wasn’t,” Jason said, starting the car crawling up the icy street, and oh, what a bitter pill that had been when he’d found out the promoters had reached out to Chase and not to him. “I was trying to make it to Philly by tomorrow but who knows if that’s going to happen now.”

Chase shook his head. “Last two times I got a call to work Philly the timing didn’t work out.”

“Staying stateside would solve that.” 

He shook his head again. “Bullet Club needs me in Japan, I go.”

“ _Needs_ you, right. They all need you so much they all got themselves some gold the second you left the country.”

Chase’s customary superior mask slipped as he looked at Jason, blue eyes big and hurt and ooh, he had drawn some blood there. He saw Chase swallow as he fumbled for a comeback but nothing came out; it felt good for a second to see there was still a heart beating somewhere deep down there. “I know what you’re trying to do,” Chase said, bravado back in his voice. “But unlike _some people_ I don’t get jealous when people I care about get success. I couldn’t be happier for my brothers and we’re all going to party when we’re back in Tokyo.”

Jason turned his eyes back toward the road, angry that somehow he’d wound up looking like the asshole between the two of them. After a few minutes of passive-aggressive driving he glanced over to Chase, ready to argue the point some more, only to find him slumped over fast asleep. Jason went back to fuming quietly, wondering why he’d put himself in this situation where he was trapped in a car with his worst enemy and couldn’t even pass the time by insulting him. Maybe there was still time to kick him into a snowdrift.

It wasn’t long before Jason was forced to admit he was doing more sliding than driving and pulled into the first motel he found with a lit vacancy sign. “Hey,” he said, shoving Chase hard. “Up and out.”

Chase woke with a start, blinking blearily up at the unfamiliar building. “Where’re we?”

“Out of my car,” Jason said again, opening his door and kicking some snow out of his path. “Or sleep out here, I don’t really care.” Chase dragged himself out of the car, leaning against the open door to stretch out his back. “And leave your shit in the car, not like you’ll need it tonight.” Chase nodded, reaching in the back to just grab a small overnight bag, and Jason trudged up to the front door without looking back.

Once inside the grubby lobby Jason couldn’t be surprised there was only one room left, because of course that was how his night was going. At least it was a room with two beds. He didn’t look up when a blast of cold air announced that Chase had finally joined him. “There’s only a double.”

“I’m not gonna be awake long enough to care. Allow me,” Chase said, pushing past him with a smirk and flashing a shiny black platinum card.

“I don’t need your money,” Jason said, storming up to the front desk and digging some crumpled bills out of his pocket. Chase stepped back with a _hey, have it your way_ shrug as Jason slid the money across the counter to the bored night clerk. He could live off vending machine chips for the next few days until he got paid again.

The room didn’t look any cleaner than the lobby had but the heat was working and that was all Jason cared about. Chase slammed the door behind them and crawled onto his bed, flopping down on his face with his boots and hat still on without saying a word. Jason retreated to the bathroom and stared into the dingy mirror for a few long minutes, regretting most of the decisions he’d made over the past hour or so. The lights flickered, creating strange shadows in the mirror. Jason lied to himself that it was storm.

He finally slipped out of the bathroom, combing his fingers through his beard as he took in the scene. Chase was back in his jet lag coma; he’d gotten his shoes off but if not for that Jason wouldn’t have thought Chase had moved the whole time he’d been out of the room. Jason sat on his own bed but was up again pacing in seconds; his whole body felt tight, like someone had shoved a corkscrew in his back the second he’d spotted Chase outside that rec center and kept twisting it. “This isn’t how things were supposed to go, but you, you had to ruin it,” he said to Chase, keeping his voice low. “It was supposed to be you and me. We were supposed to hate each other all the way across the globe, all the way up to the top. You would never admit to that but all the way deep down you know.” Jason hated it and had never understood it but he’d known it from that first instant they’d been in the ring together. This was something rare, something special; the two of them in the ring made magic together and magic, that was something Jason did understand. If you let yourself trust in that kind of magic there was nothing stronger but if it was thwarted it would turn on you. Leave you open for attack from all sides and laugh as you were eaten alive.

“You think they care about you?” Jason said, pacing back and forth in front of the bed. “Any of ‘em? You really think they’ll ever let you rise above them? That if it’s ever between you and them going for titles that they will ever choose you?” He leaned over dead to the world Chase, talking right into his ear. “They will give you their dirty work and grind you into dust and when there’s nothing left that phone will stop ringing. You’ll try to crawl back to us and finally hear how we’ve been laughing at you behind your back this whole time. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

Jason backed away, sitting on the edge of his bed. “It should have been me representing NWA back then. Me in Japan. The two of us, we know that.” He spotted Chase’s phone sitting on the end table and picked it up; of course the idiot had set 2SWEET as his lock code. Jason settled back against the headboard and started flipping through Chase’s photos, then found the folder of raw footage waiting to be edited for his webseries. “Your show is terrible and no one watches it,” Jason muttered. Maybe he should do a spell to erase the footage from this one, too. It hadn’t taken much last time and it had been petty but fun, especially when Chase had to apologize on twitter to all the jerks who followed him and pretended to be his fans. Jason felt his skin crawl as he watched the seemingly innocuous footage of crowds and hotels and Bullet Club members mugging for the camera, at the darkness creeping along the edges of every frame. He knew no one else would see that but he could. He always did.

Jason put the phone back on the table and sat on the edge of the bed again. He watched Chase and knew he would never loathe anyone else like this in his life, this spoiled, sneering brat who had everything fall into his lap and never thought to question how or why, who’d sold himself off for a song and didn’t even seem to realize it. Every time Jason saw him back from one of these trips to Japan there was less of him there and no one else seemed to notice. “It was supposed to be me,” he said, bile rising to burn the back of his throat.

Jason closed his eyes. When he was a boy for weeks straight he’d had a dream, every night exactly the same: an enormous one-eyed monster stalking him through the hills, a thing with blood and shadow for skin that skittered when it moved like a lizard or a spider. No matter how fast Jason ran or how he hid the thing would find him and pin him down, then raise one clawed hand, reach into his chest and steal a jewel from his heart. He would wake up screaming so loud his mother would say they could hear it clear over the next holler.

After three months of this his parents had shipped him off to his great-aunt who knew about these things and opened up the world to him. Taught him that sometimes dreams weren’t just dreams but truth. From there his life had been set; he’d spent every minute learning how the pieces of the world fit together the way other boys his age had learned fractions. He learned about combat both physical and mental, building his knowledge bit by bit until it covered his skin in armor only he could see. He had no weaknesses. That monster that stalked him from the shadows would find no purchase, no door left cracked open. 

And after all that effort the damn thing had managed to do it anyway.

Jason heard a sound and his eyes snapped back open; he’d been so deep inside his own head it took a few moments to come back. He realized that Chase was dreaming and that must have been what he’d heard. It didn’t seem like a good one; Chase was curled up on his bed, his fingers clutched onto the comforter. Jason watched him, that tense restlessness spreading under his skin again; when they’d split a room in the past, Chase because as much as Jason hated him everyone else hated his smug face that much more and Jason because people frankly tended to find him off-putting, that Chase Owens had always slept like a rock. Jason tried to ignore it but kept getting drawn back to Chase’s eyes rapidly moving under his closed lids, the way he would flinch suddenly like he was trying to keep from being hit. Jason pretended to himself that he hadn’t noticed what he’d been thinking about right when the nightmare had started up. That he didn’t hear sharp, mocking laughter coming from every dark corner of the room.

Chase left out a soft, pained whimper and that was it. Jason pushed off from the bed and rifled through his bag, coming up with a small drawstring pouch with a symbol stitched on it that was nonsense to anyone who didn’t know and a strong _Keep Out_ to anyone who did. “Not tonight,” he said under his breath. “Not under my roof,” and this _was_ his roof until twelve noon the next day. He remembered a long ago conversation with Chase: _You carry a bag of bones around with you? Why?_

Jason smiled to himself. _Because I never know when I might need it._

The bones of wild things that had died a natural death had power, it was the first and strongest magic he had learned: owl for watchfulness, rabbit for elusiveness, mice for tenacity. Head of a snake to find a path through the twisting dark. Jason sketched a circle in chalk around Chase’s bed, placing the bones at significant points; when he put the last piece into place Chase groaned softly. Jason sat back on his heels and watched Chase relax and fall quiet, his expression smoothing. Even the tension lines around his mouth and eyes Jason had noticed earlier were gone now.

Jason stalked back around the bed making sure everything was in place and watched to make sure the sleep stayed sound. He used just his fingertips to smooth back some hair that had worked itself loose away from Chase’s face, then threw the comforter from his bed over Chase and sat against the wall between the beds. Circles required maintenance, it wasn’t like the movies, and he needed to be sure to clean up before Chase woke. 

Jason toyed with the chalk between his fingers, the earlier restlessness simmering down into clear-eyed purpose as he listened to Chase’s soft, steady breathing. There was a shadow in the room with them that didn’t belong, that was darker than it should be, and Jason stared it down. _Not tonight._ He leaned his head back against the wall, drumming his fingers against his knees and his lips curling into a predatory snarl as he stared into the darkness.

_You have no idea what you’re dealing with._

“Going to be coming for what you took,” he said to the shadows. “Be ready for me.”

The wind rattled the windows and Jason smiled.


End file.
